What The F-Stop?

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

My co-worker introduced me to the work of Daido Moriyama yesterday. He is a Japanese photographer famous for high-contrast, black and white images. He tends to shoot in 1600 ISO to overexpose the photo, and then overdevelop it in the darkroom making for a really interesting effect. But the coolest thing about this kind of work is that it's incredibly easy to imitate on your own. Since his style is not so much using a tripod and lining up each shot with precision, but more of a haphazard kind of shooting style, you don't need any special equipment and you can shoot as you walk along the street (moving), even at night. The high ISO speeds will let you use slower shutter speeds for surprisingly clear shots at night. Then you need to boost your contrast and sharpness (I opted for highlights over sharpness because the sharpness tool on my photo editor is really terrible) on your camera or in the post processing. It's basically night photography made simple. These are some of the best shots I took tonight in the snow:

Let me know how mine stands up to the master... This was my first try..

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Sunday, June 13, 2010

A trip to the boyfriend's grandfather's grave left me with nothing to do while the menfolk took care of the grave maintenance. So, I pulled out my camera :-) Just as a note, I didn't do any post-processing on any of these photos..

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

While waiting for the boyfriend at Dongdaemun, I decided to fool around with the camera a bit. I've wanted to fool around with the shutter speeds at night for a while. This was a good opportunity. Now, unfortunately, I don't have a tripod, which makes this kind of photography really difficult with my shaky hands. I had to balance my camera on a fence and set the timer to 2 seconds so that hitting the button didn't shake the camera. Even then 10 minutes of taking photos resulted in only 3 clear photos.

According to the stats on Flickr, these photos were taken between .5-.8 seconds at 100 ISO.

Most of my photos came out very blurry like this next one. I guess my hand just can't stay steady...

How did it turn out for my first time? Any recommendations for this kind of photography?

Sunday, March 21, 2010

If you walk around the back streets behind Jongno, you'll find some funny little places. This neighborhood was full of old style homes. It was rather strange, though to walk around. There seemed to be a large concentration of ajosshis drinking at 3 in the afternoon on a Sunday. Anyway, definitely worth the walk, just watch out for strange men stumbling through the streets on a Sunday afternoon.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Tuttle from The Seoul Patch clued me in on what has been a big mystery for the past year an a half. That strange moving statue near the Seoul History Museum. It is eveidently part of of a series , of sculptures, created by Jonathan Borofsky, called Hammering Men, built to celebrate "the worker". Wikipedia has a decent write up about the topic if you're concerned. You can find other Hammering Men in cities around the world.

About This Blog

Though I've taken 2 photography courses, I still am far from being a halfway decent photographer. That being said, I do a lot of traveling and I'd like to be able to show off my photos and say "I took this shot" someday. This blog is mainly so I can get critiques from people out there in the world. Please feel free to tell me what you like and don't like. Any help would be appreciated.

About Me

A girl on a quest to conquer the world. Mostly living in Korea, but often found in other places, too. Follow my adventures and feel free to ask questions and make comments! smileyjkl (at) hotmail (dot) com